The main argument is that you can leapfrog the traditional phases of the development process. It works perfectly for newbies, cities and companies. It is now faster and much cheaper to get there, it is almost like playing lego when it comes to start pilot projects. The city hires an experienced and empowered CDO, Chief or City Digital Officer to quick off the show. And it starts really quickly, a “sampling group of citizens” get connected to the city hall; a fantastic solution for smart lighting is tested in a street or even in a district; car sharing is working well along “some" charging stations; smart meters; smart sensors; smart, smart, smart and successful pilot cases! Officials are glad, private partners are excited and citizens are anxious for the next round.
This was the “ WOW!” momentum. Congrats, your city gets its first badge -Junior Smart City. It is absolutely a good start, but definitely not enough. It is time to Scale it Up, “ NOW!”.
This article will address the challenges that follow after piloting a Smart City project – how to Scale-it-Up.. If you have done your homework well, things will be easier. At this stage it is not only clear to you but to all stakeholders that your Smart City project is in your city's DNA. Probably the successful pilot projects that your city managed were due to this initial orientation. Remember, your citizens don't want a new city but a smarter city. Second point, if for the pilot projects your city got to attract partners to ‘sponsor” and execute it, now it is time to understand how successful the projects were also for them. If it is true, they will be the first one to support you to scale. In the last article I listed 4 tools to SmartUp, so I will start from tool #5 to illustrate the ScaleUp. I will try to illustrate with at least 2 successful cases each one of the next tools, so probably it will be one article for each one of them, following a minimum logical order of implementation.
Check below the full article published in the Smart City Magazine - Jul- Sep 2016 issue, page 41 - 43:
The new concept of Smart Cities is definitely based in smart citizens and smart solutions. We need to go out of the box to achieve our goals. Be focused, don't lose track and mainly, keep it simple!
It is time to ScaleUp!
City ScaleUp
Smart city projects
Renato de Castro
Smart City Expert
Italy,
He has 20+ years of professional experience in developing market entry strategies and managing investments attraction to smart cities development worldwide and he is mentoring and advising startups for "going-global" strategies.
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